US Mountaineer Dies on Manaslu

A US climber died attempting to scale the world's fifth-highest mountain, Makalu (8,485 meters), AFP reported on Monday, the second death of this climbing season.
“He (Alexander Pancoe, 39) had descended (to Camp II) after an acclimatization rotation to Camp III, and was not feeling well, Iswari Paudel of Himalayan Guides Nepal,” told AFP.
Attempts were underway to bring his body down.
An accomplished climber, Pancoe had survived a brain tumour when he was younger.
He had completed the Explorer's Grand Slam, a challenge that involves climbing the highest peak on each of the seven continents and then skiing to both the North and South Pole.
Pancoe was recently fighting chronic myeloid leukaemia and was attempting to climb Makalu to raise funds for the pediatric blood cancer program of the Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.
"It's going to be a huge challenge for me — climbing at altitude is plenty hard without a chronic ailment — but I look forward to rising to the challenge," he said on his website Peaks of Mind.
An Austrian climber died while descending Nepal's Ama Dablam after a successful summit last month, the first death of the summit season.
Nepal is home to eight of the world's 14 highest peaks, including the Sagarmatha (8848.84 meters), the highest peak, and welcomes hundreds of climbers every year during the spring and autumn climbing seasons.
It has already issued nearly 500 permits for its mountains this season, including 214 for Sagarmatha.